Repainted what is essentially my studio bathroom, formerly my daughter’s bathroom, which I had permitted her to paint bright salmon pink. Color yes, pink no. It was the most annoying room I have ever painted—all obstacles, no room to maneuver—but it’s done, and now I get to build a wall cabinet.

my bathroom is “dirty yellow” with aqua blue vanity lamps and a multicolor striped shower curtain

View from my driveway after the wettest July since the 1930s

Vertical profusion of brown eyed susans. Tallest flowers are about seven feet

Speaking of buying things: The very last straw for me with SquareSpace was discovering that without my choice or even knowledge it was now possible to buy, via my website, a $30 spreader in four easy payments of $7.50. Make a new plan, Stan. We’re finished.

Why is it that there are more items for sale on the internet than protons in the sun but I cannot find the thing I actually want

Challenge: Create a two hour setlist of cover songs appropriate for a farmers market busker that does not contain any songs you have ever heard sung or played at a farmers market.

This one is titled “To Me the Converging Objects of the Universe Perpetually Flow,” which is what happens when you fill the time between customers at the craft market reading your pocket edition of Walt Whitman and doodling.

chip carving of blue jay soaring with rosette sun, moon, stars, flowers

This is, I don’t know what. Reptilian love child of Pennsylvania Dutch and Zuni?

turtle with rosette and flowers, chip carving, inexplicable folk art business

Recently there have been several major mathematical breakthroughs enabled entirely by AI: both proofs and counterexamples to long-held conjectures. Ordinarily I read about this sort of ting with interest. Now I find I simply don’t care. Mathematics may have its uses but it is not interesting because it is useful; it is interesting because it is beautiful. The pursuit of mathematics is valuable not because it is important to be right but because the pursuit of it is beautiful. It is not like having a cure for cancer and not minding where it came from. It is the difference between watching a dancer and watching a computer simulation of a dance. If it isn’t human, to hell with it.

At Roy Underhill’s window-making class, 2022… At the end of the first day he went around the room sweeping the entire class’s shavings to each bench and took these faked photos.

me, faking visible exhaustion, standing at a workbench over a massive pile of wood shavings

Facing the usual early-July glut of cherry tomatoes I made confit: basil leaves in a baking dish, a layer of whole cherry tomatoes, a few crushed cloves of garlic, a liberal sprinkle of salt and enough olive oil to come about halfway up the tomatoes. Roast at 325F for maybe an hour until slightly brown on top and wrinkled.

I was afraid I was wasting two pints of tomatoes but honestly the result is one of the best things I have ever eaten. (Though I do say that about once a month.) The confit went into a couple of half-pint containers in the freezer, whence I’ll have pasta sauce in a couple of months when the season is over.